Helping people sell stuff since 1999

June 28, 2011

IPA Datamine 3 – from integration to orchestration

Some of the planning team went to an IPA talk about this last week on this new report published by the IPA, which got me interested in it. The paper argues that there has been a change in approach to constructing campaigns between 2004 – 2010. The model surrounding how to create marketing campaigns has evolved over these 7 years as based on 250 IPA effectiveness awards winning papers. The paradigm now, the IPA argues, is more akin to conducting an orchestra than ‘ever it has been before’.

They found that there were four models of integration that are generally employed by marketers:

No obvious integration. Lots of different media without co-ordination, diverse communications, or only a single media in use

Advertising led integration. Campaigns are ordered around a common creative idea. The look and feel of the campaign is very much the same. This was generally speaking the most popular type of campaign in use in the early stages – from 2004 onwards.

Brand – led orchestration. Campaigns are constructed around a higher order brand idea, without necessarily having to all look the same as they all share the same value

Participation – led orchestration. Campaigns are inviting consumers to be part of the campaign, and they are a very fundamental part of the success of the activity

Over the 7 years the focal point for campaigns has been changing over the duration of the analysis. 66% of campaigns were using an advertising- led integration model in 2004. Whereas by 2010 the use of this model had dropped to 39% of all the studies awarded at the IPA Awards. On the other hand, there has been a commensurate shift towards the higher order brand-led campaign structure (from 16% in 2004 - to 39% in 2010).

Across the study period, only 10% of the papers analysed use participation-led orchestration, and while this amount had increased slightly, the overall numbers are still relatively low

Brand-led campaigns as effective as advertising-led campaigns

A key learning, and a very heartening one for anyone who has been asked to “make it like the press ad” is that brand-led orchestration campaigns are just as effective as advertising-led integration across the broad range of metrics.

In some it demonstrates improvements, for instance in customer retention and profit gain. In contrast, traditionally integrated campaigns are marginally more effective at share gain and customer acquisition.

As an aside, Carl planning director at Elvis who went to the talk, said three is the most effective number of media to drive hard business measures. So there you go.

Participation campaigns are hard to measure in the traditional sense, but under perform on pretty much everything though excel in delivering reward for existing users and eliciting brand fame (ie softer metrics).

The section concludes by saying this may be due to the fact that the campaigns generally had a small reach or direct sales outcome. The panel puts across the view that new means of measuring these campaigns are needed. Additionally, perhaps the IPA effectiveness papers are less effective as a consequence of the smaller budgets that are likely to have been put into these type of ‘test’ campaigns.

The whole thing looks very good, and if I can find someone to copy it off, I might even read it.